Ní Saoirse go Saoirse na mBan!

International Working Women's Day (IWWD) traces its origins to the labour movements of Europe and North America in the early 20th century. At the 1910 International Conference of Socialist Women in Copenhagen, Clara Zetkin proposed the annual celebration of a day dedicated to women's struggle for equality and emancipation. She also advanced the crucial task of uniting women across the globe against the policies of imperialist governments, which inevitably lead to bloody conflicts between nations.

Women Under Capitalism

Every economic system in the past—slavery, feudalism, and capitalism—has been founded on the exploitation of one class by another. Invariably, women are the most exploited in every system that has existed. Beyond class oppression, women have had to endure patriarchy and, in many cases, racism.

The capitalist system, reliant on wage slavery, requires hierarchy to facilitate exploitation. Rapid automation during the industrial revolution created a need to draw women into the labour force, as they could be paid less and made more submissive. This, in turn, allowed capitalists to suppress the wages of male workers. Yet, this process also created the material conditions for men and women to unite against their common enemy: capital. In 1917, striking workers from Petrograd's Putilov factory joined a women's rally on March 8th, an action that ignited the Bolshevik Revolution. Women have thus been at the forefront of the struggle to abolish the very system of oppression of which they are the worst victims.

Capitalism and Inequality

The World Inequality Report (WIR) states that globally, women earn only one-third of all labour income. When unpaid domestic labour is factored in, women continue to work longer hours than men across the world. They not only work more hours but are also paid less. This unpaid domestic work creates barriers to opportunities in the formal labour market, deepening gender inequality. The lack of affordable childcare, transportation, and other social services creates structural obstacles that prevent women from fully entering the workforce. Furthermore, occupational segregation channels women into low-paid sectors, perpetuating disparities in income. While increased access to education has improved the situation for some, it has not eliminated the systemic problem of gender inequality.

In Ireland, the Communist Party of Ireland has identified housing, healthcare, and neutrality as three core issues that disproportionately affect women. Peace and neutrality are essential for a state to allocate resources toward social goods like education, health, and housing—and history teaches us that women are the ones most profoundly affected by war.

Women's Emancipation and the New World

To create a new world means not just to change the mode of production, but also to forge a better version of humankind, free from patriarchy and discrimination. Patriarchy has its roots in private property; therefore, to truly liberate women is to abolish private property. Capitalism needs patriarchy. The patriarchal family subsidizes capitalism through the unpaid domestic work of women, which reproduces the labour power of the male worker, enabling him to return to work each day. Patriarchy also serves capital by relying on the unpaid labour of women to raise the next generation of workers, ensuring a fresh pool of labour power for future exploitation.

Reclaiming Women's Day

As it does with all revolutionary traditions, capitalism attempts to empty IWWD of its class content. It transforms this day into a commercial opportunity, a means to sell commodities and generate profit, obscuring the radical history and struggle from which it was born. The working class has a duty to reclaim International Working Women's Day. We must remind ourselves of the monumental achievements of women in the movement toward socialism and stand together in the struggle to create a peaceful new world—one without any form of oppression: class, gender, race, or caste.

Socialism is impossible without women's liberation, and women's liberation is impossible without socialism.

--

James Corcoran

General Secretary

Communist Party of Ireland

http://www.communistpartyofireland.ie/

https://socialistvoice.ie/

--

James Corcoran

General Secretary

Communist Party of Ireland

http://www.communistpartyofireland.ie/

https://socialistvoice.ie/